


Children of Stone

by Linane



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Angels, Angst, Brief mentions of major character death, Demons, Gods, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Religion, Sort of reincarnation AU, Wingfic, but with happy ending, emotional h/c, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:03:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9664577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linane/pseuds/Linane
Summary: Written for the Winter FRE 2017. Prompt 68: Wing!ficThe first and only thing you need to know about this story is that my Muse was clearly tripping as he wrote this. Please also note that the scenes are often in random sequence.





	

_The world is changed_  
_I feel it in the water_  
_I feel it in the earth_  
_I smell it in the air_  
_Much that once was is lost_  
_For none now live who remember it._

 

\---

 

“Fili, no!” He cries. “I know what they’ve done to you, I know what you are. I know what you feel every time I return your affection.”

The blond can only stare. Nobody knows. Nobody _can_ know.

“I didn’t know before. If I did I would never have agreed for you to hurt yourself like that,” he whispers, so forlorn that Fili’s heart aches.

It’s true that for every flicker of pleasure Fili pays with pain, and there are marks on his skin, not quite healed yet, to testify to that. But it’s his only escape. It’s the only thing that keeps him sane.

“I will not risk losing your soul again. I will keep you safe.” He moves, completely in synch with his Power, allowing it to overcome him.

“That is not your choice,” comes a quiet response, but so saturated with an opposite type of Power that Fili shivers, taking in the faintly glowing golden eyes and a shadow of huge, leathery wings, at least twice as big as his own. “We are old souls, Fili. Trapped inside an immortal form and at the mercy of time. But you –“

“- belong with me,” Fili finishes for him and something inside him howls.

 

\---

 

The world is changed.

It all starts much earlier than people will later claim, once history gains its record. It starts when there is a shift and polarisation in power: clear evil appearing and defining itself by its actions, and in response, defined good also taking shape.

Light and darkness.

As Gods unite against the Dark Lord and races clash, as the two start interfering with each other, re-writing each other’s story, the world transforms, adapts in the only way it can so it will survive.

Time flows like it always does, and minds forget the particulars, forget the old beliefs, until the words have been repeated enough times to be true.

God and devil standing in front of each other, laughing.

 

\---

 

Fili forgets.

He goes entire eons without remembering he had a brother. The only way in which a mind stretched too thin can protect itself.

But sometimes the tiniest things can set him off: the sound of laughter. A feather. A timbre of someone’s voice. He blinks and inhales the memories that are more him than what he is now.

Sometimes Kili is the only thing he knows.

_Kili, Kili, Kili..._

He’s searching, forever searching. How long has it been? Is there anything left? He tilts the vial with Madonna’s tears and swallows (illegal, sweet and wonderful), takes a deep drag of the incense and drifts off into oblivion.

 

\---

 

They couldn’t have known, before.

Fili is a sacrifice. He dies for another and that grants him a place in heaven.

No Mahal’s Halls for him; instead an overwhelming pain as the huge, white wings rip free through the skin of his back, two pairs, almost more than he is himself.

He screams and fights his way all through ascension.

Kili dies for revenge and that damns him for all eternity. He watches talons break open his fingers, leather unfolding behind him, his eyes bleeding to black.

He doesn’t scream as he falls, too busy trying to protect himself from darkness and hatred he’s never known in life.

The Maker doesn’t seem to care for him either.

 

\---

 

Their first meeting After is on the battlefield (they’ve always been warriors).

Kili doesn’t blink as the shot is fired, only reloads his XM2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle and takes aim again, while the machine gun rains crumbled concrete all over the floor of the ruined building he’s using as his hideout.

He freezes, something that hasn’t happened to him for the past three hours he’s spent shooting angels.

His first hint is the fact that his latest target is ambidextrous.

He watches as the man in a worn leather jacket shoots a demon in front of him with his right hand, in one seamless move using his left to dispatch another one behind him.

It’s so confident, arrogant almost –

The second hint is the way the man leads, calling his troops to him, watching, always watching the situation around him, assessing. Brave, inspiring, focussed; and yet, not one of his men falls.

Something in his mind cracks, just the tiniest bit and Kili thinks –

 _Fili, who could be king_.

He takes down three demons that pose a potential threat in less than a minute and then he’s flying, insane, through the criss-cross of live fire right over the battlefield towards what’s _his_.

 

\---

 

They have loved long before the Battle of Five Armies.

It’s possible they have always been in love – after all, the souls forged in Mahal’s Fire to fit perfectly are difficult to separate, no matter how they manifest, or what they are twisted into.

“Kiss me,” Kili breathes and Fili obeys, hands trailing up his back and pulling him closer.

He feels fingers in his hair and tastes dust and Kili.

“Always. No matter what happens tomorrow. I love you.”

“Always.”

Sweet. Everything used to be so sweet back then.

 

\---

 

It would be oh-so-easy to disregard yet another body.

But there is a voice, a voice he _knows_ , out of place, screaming –

Blue eyes watch a demon gone insane, falling right at them on wings torn with bullets.

He takes aim –

Heartbeat.

_No._

Another.

_NO._

The force of impact is so great that it lifts Fili clear off the ground and throws him several meters back and into the bloodied mud. They roll for a moment, until Fili comes on top, four blindingly white wings of a Being he is now stretching to their full, impressive span above him, half in aggression, half in defence.

He restrains the Power with utmost difficulty.

“Go! Keep moving! I’ve got this,” he orders his men and waits until the front line moves on before wrapping them both in his own wings.

“Kili,” he whispers against the lips of a creature nearly unconscious from pain.

It’s the first time Fili learns that he cannot touch a demon without injuring himself.

 

\---

 

Kili forgets.

He goes entire eons without remembering that they have met again, that they stand a chance.

He likes staying on Earth. There is something about people that appeals to him, something about their fleeting lives, about their unimportant choices that fascinate Kili.

His is the domain of the damned and the forsaken, but he finds it hard to be the Creature he’s meant to be.

And so he stands up to abusive husbands, he sits down to talk with whores and occasionally hunts down killers.

He’s a Monster, he knows, never to be saved, and yet he hides what he is and protects, as best as he can, those whose lives he’s managed to touch.

 

\---

 

He comes round to gentle fingers trying to stretch out his wing.

“Don’t move. You have half a pound of blessed silver in you,” says a quiet voice and Kili freezes, even as a bullet is plucked from a broken bone covered in scraps of leather.

“Fili…” he chokes out, gasping in pain.

“What were you thinking?” Fili shakes his head, crouching down next to him, voice full of beating heart, longing and tiny specks of affection.

They’re in a forest, but not too far away from the battle, judging by the distant roar.

“Missed you,” Kili whispers, tears tying the rest of the sentence in his throat, “so much…”

“I know. I missed you too,” the blond responds, pushing the hair out of his eyes for him. His fingers come away covered in blood, probably from handling Kili’s ruined wings. “Now, we have to stop the bleeding. Can you lift your arms up?”

“Fili.”

“I couldn’t find one of your med-packs, so ours will have to suffice. The meds and painkillers have been thrice blessed of course, so they’d only make you ill, but the bandages should be alright –“

“Fili.”

“Honestly, if you weren’t a demon, this many bullets would –“

“I need you.”

It’s only quiet and he can’t even look at Fili, covered in blood, but radiant, with his four magnificent wings, a polar opposite of himself.

Fili freezes, where he’s tucking the end of the bandage he’s wrapped tightly around Kili’s chest.

“This isn’t the time or the place, Kili.” Only now Kili notices just how highly strung Fili is at this moment, how much Power is crackling between them, threatening to rip them to shreds. “But –“ a hand, gently cradling the side of his face, and a place appears in his mind, a solitary cabin by the stream, far away in the mountains “- this is where you can find me. Always.”

And with that Fili takes off, as distant voices sound through the undergrowth.

 

\---

 

Fili stares at his hand, at the flesh seared off the bones and blood covering the whole mess.

Kili did this. Somehow, without realising.

He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, they are opposites now, after all.

He takes a deep breath and runs his other hand over the injury, watching the skin knit together and blood disappear. He closes his hand tight to test the spell and winces, but the illusion holds true.

 

\---

 

The elven beds are uncomfortably soft.

Kili feels like he’s sinking into the mattress, deeper and deeper until it will swallow him whole.

“P-Pillow, Fili,” he demands, studiously ignoring the little hitch in his own voice when his brother finds his mark.

“Excellent idea,” Fili agrees with a slow, pleased smile. “Several, even. It’ll feel better,” he insists, tapping Kili’s hips in a sign to lift them.

Four pillows later Kili is nearly bent in half but Fili slips oh so deep inside him and Kili forgives him for his cockiness.

Fingers twine with his own in the rumpled sheets and they start once again – slow, wet, drunk on the hazy pleasure.

Kili twists and Fili gives and gives and gives and it’s obvious that they will never be without this love.

 

\---

 

“I never wanted to be an angel. I only wanted to keep you safe.”

“I know. I’m sorry I wasted your gift.” They watch the sun sink into the sharp mountain edges in the distance and wonder if the Old Gods bled when they died, or if they have just been… forgotten and are still out there, sowmewhere. “Then again… I can’t imagine life after seeing you fall.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. We’re here now. We have each other.”

“Yes. I love you, brother.”

“And I love you.”

 

\---

 

They don’t tell you how much demons crave the Light, how hungry they are for it.

Kili lasts years, decades even, fighting the Monster within him.

Until one summer afternoon Fili finds him heaving, claws splintering the wood he’s just chopped.

“You should take what you need. You know I don’t care for His Grace, I only care for you.”

“No. It will… infect you. With time it will consume you. I can’t.”

“Kili…” he says as gently as he can, pushing his shirt and t-shirt away from his neck. “I give it freely. Please…”

They don’t tell you how much Falling hurts, how much of yourself you give up.

Kili doesn’t stop, _can’t_ stop perhaps, until Fili slides down to his knees.

“I’m so sorry,” wet lips whisper against the sensitive skin of his neck and with that Kili is gone.

 

\---

 

It is 2170, and people have forgotten how to feel.

Kili in turn fights desperately to forget what he's done to Fili (the taste of that Light, the overwhelming pleasure of corruption). For all his strength the memories linger, and he helps himself to a new drug flooding the human streets. It's called MRF, and he takes it in quantities which would kill a mortal three times over, but in Kili’s case they only make him brave (and stupid).

“Hey. Wanna share some memories?” he sways into the man, quite on purpose.

Startled blue eyes and hands on his hips helping stabilise him.

“Ah. I thought we’d bump into each other sooner or later,” he slurs, thinking that he hasn’t had nearly enough. “Pity it took so long. I got emotions too, if you like. Real strong shit.”

Something wet soaks into Kili’s worn jeans where Fili is holding him, but he ignores it in favour of challenging his brother’s soul.

“Alright then. What’s your price?”

“Some of yours. It’s only fair.”

Fili swallows, but nods, and somehow they stumble into the nearest booth of the Neuro-Psych Interface. Kili slams his hand against the glass pane with more force than strictly necessary to activate it, against the gentle touch of Fili’s bloodied fingertips on the other side, and suddenly –

They are One again, even if it’s only the tiny sparks of bytes flicking between them.

 

\---

 

The next time Fili finds his brother, people have left their world and spread to all corners of the universe.

By now Kili truly believes himself to be merely a human.

And why not? It’s been so long that heaven and hell have forgotten to hate each other and Fili himself isn’t sure what he is any more.

The world has moved on again and angels… nobody remembers the angels.

He wishes God remembered to mop up all His mythical creatures when he was leaving.

The contact still hurts, but he casts his illusions without conscious thought by now.

He takes what he can at this point, takes the laughter in the deep dark tunnels, the water glowing in soft blue and illuminating Kili’s face and a planet with three moons.

He allows himself to love and be loved in return.

For a time, they are happy.

 

\---

 

The Creatures come from the Void, a different kind of Darkness to the one created by the Gods.

Worlds fall. Planets fall.

Fili lives long enough to see Kili’s chest skewered with a metal rod, one final tear rolling down his cheek.

Everything rips after that, four giant wings appearing behind a Being from Another Time. Power, the same Power that his Sacrifice has earned him is now his to unleash, to deal death to Nothingness, with everything that he Is, until there is nothing left.

Black, corrupted feathers burn with the Destruction he has become and Fili moves to reap.

 

\---

 

Kili doesn’t believe in afterlife; he is thrust into one all the same.

_Fili. His love. His hands and lips and eyes and simple, quiet love of another soul wrapped around his own._

_Halls that are no more and eternal damnation for the desperate wrath he wouldn’t stop even if he could. Angels, demons, God and the cruel laws set out by them._

_The way Fili flinches every time Kili touches him nowadays. Black feathers and a mind ground down by time nearly into dust._

Kili remembers everything.

 

\---

 

“Fili, no!” He cries. “I know what they’ve done to you, I know what you are. I know what you feel every time I return your affection.”

The blond can only stare. Nobody knows. Nobody _can_ know.

“I didn’t know before. If I did I would never have agreed for you to hurt yourself like that,” he whispers, so forlorn that Fili’s heart aches.

It’s true that for every flicker of pleasure Fili pays with pain, and there are marks on his skin, not quite healed yet, to testify to that. But it’s his only escape. It’s the only thing that keeps him sane.

“I will not risk losing your soul again. I will keep you safe.” He moves, completely in synch with his Power, allowing it to overcome him.

“That is not your choice,” comes a quiet response, but so saturated with an opposite type of Power that Fili shivers, taking in the faintly glowing golden eyes and a shadow of huge, leathery wings, at least twice as big as his own. “We are old souls, Fili. Trapped inside an immortal form and at the mercy of time. But you –“

“- belong with me,” Fili finishes for him and something inside him howls.

 

\---

 

The bubble is only small, but the Old Man finds it with ease in the Darkness.

Because the little shred of a world contains two of his own creations, clinging together stubbornly against all odds imaginable.

He watches them for a moment and they watch him in return: calm, strong and bright with the same spark he’s granted them all those millennia ago.

It may be nearly his end, but he feels proud all the same – he’s known Gods who have lasted less than these two and who have been less sane by the end.

Souls are created by Gods. Gods spring from belief. And belief is nothing but a concentrated thought.

And thoughts…?

Because it _is_ merely a thought at this point: one final gamble. A parting gift.

 _Like a pebble into the pond. Let's see what ripples they create_.

“Remember: there is more to the world than Light and Darkness,” he says and with a bout of laughter Mahal starts re-forging time.

 

\---

 

They wake up together and at the same time, which is far less unusual than it should be.

Their bodies hurt more than they ever remember them hurting, but their minds feel strangely light and free.

Kili groans and rolls onto his side, so he can tuck himself against his brother’s body.

“You know,” croaks a hoarse voice in the peaceful darkness of the Mountain, “it’s not everything they make it out to be.”

“You mean battles?” Kili whispers into the skin of Fili’s shoulder, luxuriating in an arm that is slowly but stubbornly curling around his waist, “No, they really aren’t.”

Fili humms his agreement and presses a gentle kiss to Kili’s forehead.

 

\---

 

Their healing takes time. A lot of time, hours, days and weeks full of closeness, of patient knitting of the tough dwarven bodies. Hundreds and thousands of kisses of touches and more when the pain finally subsides. Shared laughter, shared bed, shared food, shared responsibilities.

If they have been close before, they are inseparable now.

“I had the strangest dream, you know,” one of them whispers one hazy morning, safe in the cocoon of blankets they made for themselves and hands roaming the naked skin lazily.

“Just now? Or… Just before we woke from the Battle?”

“You had it too?”

“Mmmmm…” the other confirms, pressing skin flush against skin in a completely selfish and unabashed gesture. “But the details are getting hazy by now. What I remember the most is that I loved you. For a very long time.”

“Always, brother.”

“Always.”

 

\---


End file.
